Ip Man 3, released on Mar. 4, received box office income of $72 million within the first three days. According to the most popular Chinese movie ticket booking mobile apps, some movie theaters scheduled a screening every 10 minutes between midnight to 3 am having all tickets sold out. This phenomenon raised suspicion of China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), who immediately started an investigation. Beijing Fang Da screening agency company later issued an announcement, stating that they arranged about 7600 ghost screenings, worth $8 million. Ghost screenings are the practice of purchasing movie theater tickets in vast amounts in order to give the appearance of prevailing excitement so as to stimulate further sale and remain competitive on the global movie market. Fang Da, later, received a penalty from SARFT that banned it from distributing movies for a month.In recent years, China’s movie industry has witnessed tremendous prosperity - it saw great investment to movie production and highest box records broken again and again. But does the prosperity in the market equal the prosperity of ideology? Can the flourish of theatrical art be accurately reflected or evaluated by the monetary standards? Has art been reduced to mere commercial commodity measured by numerical value? “A cultural and artistic entertainment blossom cannot be judged by box office,” said a delegate of the People’s National Congress. Just like literature, music and other art forms, movies desire and demand the resonance between the creators and the consumers. It is a reciprocal process, where the value of the film is achieved when it receives the output of the audience. The ghost screening also put the PRC law on cinema regulation under the spotlight. The establishment and implementation of the China cinema and film law have always been standing in between eager foreign movie distributors and the highly profitable Chinese consumer market. Every year, the SARFT will issue foreign movie import quota, which is then strictly implemented. Imported foreign movies are also subject to strict scrutiny and regulation. Now that with the ghost screening exposed to the public as an unspoken rule, international movie distributors might be even more hesitant about entering the Chinese market. The ghost behind the ghost screening is the belittlement of the significance of movies as an art form. The pursuit of economic gains tramps over the request for artistically or culturally valuable theatrical work, eventually demolish the creative atmosphere. Powerful and resourceful sponsors manipulate box office and direct public opinion on a particular movie through ghost screenings, which severely disadvantages independent movies and discourages the market from evolving and advancing to meet the international standards. This article was written by Mengzhu Chen. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Blondinrikard Fröberg via Flickr